Old Haunts
by the milliner's rook
Summary: You were just gone, Toushirou, what was I to think? I thought—I thought you'd come back, and you did, twenty years too late.


Written for Day 6 of HitsuKarin Week 2014. Prompt: Taylor Swift's 'All Too Well'.

* * *

She's finished taking the kids to school when he appears outside her house. He stands behind her, silent as he always has been in this form, a ghost that walks among the living. He has many names, Karin knows, but she sticks to calling him a ghost these days. It's become a habit, now more than anything, and it used to be too painful to call him by the name he is given,

To her, he has always been a ghost, existing in the shadows of her mind, never truly leaving. His presence hangs over her, a bitter reminder about the difference of life and death, of her and him, and that which divides them.

From the moment she'd woken up, Karin had sensed him, knowing that he was in town, and she'd brushed that thought away as if it was mere sand in her eyes. She'd yawned and kissed her husband, but she'd still felt _off_, even while she busied her mind with more domestic things in life. The thought of him—the feel of his _reiatsu_—loomed over her, and she sighed, wishing that his presence alone wouldn't bring all the memories back.

She thought she put the past behind her.

Takashi had noticed. He drew her in his arms and asked her quietly if she was going to be okay. Whether it was written over her face, or whether he'd sensed it like she had, a discrepancy in this two bit town, she didn't ask, focusing on answering the question honestly.

_I don't know_, she meant to say, staring hopelessly at him, spooked. Instead, she leant back on the kitchen counter and spoke in hushed tones, so their children didn't hear. All she said was _yeah, don't worry about it._

He knew her secrets, trusted her even as he worried. So he'd nodded, and backed away, kissing her forehead as a symbol of good luck, and then she'd grabbed him and kissed him properly goodbye while Daiki wrinkled his nose and tugged his sister's hair. Her little girl started to cry because of that and Karin had spent five minutes fussing over Risa, blowing raspberries so she'd smile again, then her two darling children rushed to get their bags packed for the start of a school day while Karin found her keys, ready to walk them to school.

And then she'd waved them off at the gates, her smile true until she couldn't ignore his _reiatsu _any longer and thought it was time to face her oldest ghost like she had every other time.

"You took your time." She comments, wishing that she'd prepared for this moment to happen, even though part of her dreaded it happening at all. She turns the key and opens the door, then turns at last to face him, wondering if he'd changed at all. "Do you want to come in?"

"If that's alright with you." Toushirou mutters, shoulders hunched in his pockets, untouched by time, it seems. He is exactly the same as Karin remembers, and that breaks the part of her heart that cares about him, even now.

"Wouldn't have offered if I didn't." Karin shrugs, the words easy enough to say with a blasé tone, and who is she fooling really? Maybe it was a good thing that they had become strangers, drifting apart until years later because she'd lost her ticket, and could never find it in herself to ask Yuzu to borrow it, even temporarily. "If it's worth anything, I've missed you, old friend."

It doesn't sound resentful to her ears, but she knows the resentment is _there_, buried deep in the marrow of her bones, weary and marked and part of her like every unthreaded tapestry that never found its way back to where it was meant to go. If she was younger, perhaps she might be unravelling now, letting loose her temper, after the relief that he's alive, at least in some sense of the word, passes.

Karin has missed him. She can admit that freely.

He doesn't say anything but closes the door behind him, and follows her into the living room.

Her heart doesn't race like it used to, and that's reassuring too.

"So," Karin begins, settling into the sofa, "what did you want to talk about?"

He doesn't say anything and stares at the photographs scattered throughout the living room. This is the life she lives, her past which he can only get snippets at because he hasn't been here in so long.

It strikes her then that she's turned into Haru. That day has finally come, and she laughed at the idea of it when she was ten, because she was young and arrogant and thought she'd be young forever. But—while she isn't as old as Haru when they first met, there is no doubt that she _will_ turn into Haru someday. Her hair will turn white, and she will be wizened and wrinkly and weary.

Except Karin had never asked if Haru had loved Toushirou like she had loved him, with all her impetuous beating heart. She'd fallen so hopelessly in love.

And then she'd moved on, and Karin didn't regret that either. It was better to move on than to be a ghost, so she taken her heart back and decided not to wait any longer.

She is in love with the man she married, and there's no way that Karin regrets that.

And yet, when Toushirou looks at her across the sofa, there's a flutter of that young girl's heart that exists within her still, swearing that she would wait forever because that's what people in love did: they waited.

But Karin's not the same person any more, even though she carries his ghost and her own inside.

"You look well," Toushirou starts, quiet, unsure how to proceed. Maybe it's because she's gotten old(ish) or because she knew him for such a long time, but Karin can read him easily. It's like whiplash, a twist in the gut, and all the memories she thought she'd forgotten are rushing through her like she's ten and thirteen, young and in love with him, him, _him._

"Thanks." Karin grins, and easy to smile at him. Thirty isn't a bad age, really. Being thirty means that she feels settled and in her skin and confident and knowing what she wants and feeling so much more comfortable with who she is and what she can do. Thirty means that physically, at least, she's more adult than him. "You still look like an elementary student though."

"Hey!"

"What?" Karin drawls, relishing the opportunity while it lasts, because who knows when it'll happen again? "I'm thirty going on thirty-one and you're… what was it, one hundred and something going on ten? Eleven, if I squint." She teases, grinning even more while she watches him squirm, his face growing beet red. There'll be smoke fuming out of his ears next. "Since I'm getting on, maybe you're twelve?" She tilts her head to the side and pretends to think. "Kids these days, they look so young."

"You're a riot, as always." Droll, he comments. "I'm glad that hasn't changed."

"Aren't I?" Karin smiles beautifully, proud of that compliment.

It's astonishingly easy to slip back into being ten again, so simple. She doesn't have to think about it, being like this with him is as natural as breathing, and Karin isn't sure what that means. She's heard that friends often act the age that they first meet, but she's never believed it.

"I've got a century of these jokes to tell, and I'm pretty sure you'll be waiting for the punchline when I'm dead and buried because you'll have centuries to wait because I'll still be taller than you."

"Shut up." Toushirou looks at her fondly, chuckling, and then he smiles, because it feels like even if he is technically older than her, he still seems so _young_. Even more so, now that she's an adult and he isn't. "I mean it, Karin, I am glad you're the same."

"You know, you could have dropped by at any time, if you worried about that." Karin shrugs, looking at him seriously, the back of her neck prickling. Unconsciously, her fingers twitch, brushing the ring that rests on her finger, and that makes her feel calmer. "Hell, I sent you an invite to my wedding, and still, you didn't show."

He sighs, lowering his head, hands fumbling nervously like he wants nothing more than to put them in his pockets, and he fidgets while the clock ticks in the silence.

"I know," apologetically, he says, "I was—"

"Busy, I know. You're a captain, so I guess you would be. Soul Society needed you. Needs you." Karin interrupts, because it was never her intention to chastise him. Karin had come to terms with it; she thought she's put the past to rest, even while it was unresolved. These things happen. She knew, but she didn't want to hear it.

Just because she was friends with him, doesn't mean that he prioritises her over his duty.

It didn't mean that she liked it, but she'd rationalized it well enough.

"No," Toushirou shakes his head, and he sounds pained, "Karin, I was in love with you."

"Oh." She blinks, feeling blank. She'd never thought of it like that before. She'd never entertained the possibility that it was even mutual. "That's why you avoided me all this time?" She asks slowly, unseeing, cogs turning in her mind, feeling something build up in her chest, lungs transforming into hot, hot air until—"Why didn't you say something? High school—I mean, waited all through high school for _you_, Toushirou."

That says something. That means something. He has to understand that.

Her hands curl into tight fists, shaking while anger floods her chest, and rushes through her because she can't believe what she's hearing. It's been so long since she's felt like losing her temper like this, at such a _dumb_ thing.

"You loved me so you stayed away?"

What kind of fucked up logic is _that?_

"Karin," Toushirou's voice trembles, and she forces herself to listen to him. "It's not a good idea—"

"Didn't stop my old man." She spits, dismissive, unable to help herself because people unravel eventually, they always do, and Karin can hold a grudge at the worst of times. She has grown up, and she has turned bitter and cruel, and maybe people grow up to being cynical adults or maybe people return to being a child to be cruel and that is something that never goes away, the knowledge of how to hurt people most. Karin knows when she's being cruel and playing dirty. She doesn't care.

It must him as much as it hurts her.

He looks appalled, before he narrows his eyes, temper fraying.

"That is _not_ the same thing and _you_ know it. They are two different circumstances, so don't you start. He was my captain, how do you think I felt when I found out what happened?" He roars, cheeks blustering red.

They used to argue like this all the time.

They'd shout at each other until they were blue in the face and couldn't breathe, and it's weird that in her nostalgia, their shouting matches had seemed fun.

"I can't grow old with you, Karin. Not in the same way." Toushirou admits, exhaling deeply, and trying hard to maintain some semblance of order, and Karin says nothing, knowing that he has a point. She just wanted for him to hurt. His chest rises and falls, and he speaks again, and he's as bitter as she feels. "You age faster than me."

"And that's my fault?" Karin asks him flatly, unimpressed. "It's my fault that Soul Society slows down aging for you?"

"Of course not." He snaps, green eyes dark and wild, and never has she seen him look quite so frazzled. "Of course it isn't, Karin, but it was painful for me, knowing that I could never—" He swallows, and Karin watches his Adam's apple bob, "—be there for you, the way I wanted to."

Karin looks at her hands, the ring on her finger, and takes a deep breath. At some point, they'd stopped being closed fists, and relaxed into her calves. She takes a deep breathe again, tries to process everything that's been said.

"It terrified me. I hated it."

"So you cut me out." Karin finishes, idly wondering if he was like this for Haru, that old lady who knew him first, before Karin had even been born, and Toushirou first visited Karakura town. Had he been there for her funeral? Had he mourned her loss? "I wish you'd told me before. Back then."

Deadpanning, he replies. "Why, so you'd call me an idiot?"

"No, because I was in love with you too." Karin admits, glad that she can say it at last, to his face and watch him go pale. "But, that too. You can't help being an idiot, anyway." Karin agrees, grinning with vindictive pleasure. "Someone needed to take you down a peg."

"And you were perfect for that job." Toushirou sighs. "But—"

"But seriously," Karin says, not letting him finish, considering his question and frowning. "I would have understood that more than the cold shoulder. You were just _gone_, Toushirou, what was I to think? I thought—I thought you'd come back, and you did, twenty years too late." She swallows, and blinks too fast, but still she says the words because this is something he needs to hear and this is something she needs to say. "I think—I think I still would have hated it, hated you, maybe I'd have never forgiven you for being such a… oh, I don't know, an idiot. But." She pauses, hesitating, because who can say what would have happened if it had gone like that. "Eventually, it would have got through my thick head, and… I'd get it."

Her voice fades without meaning to, and Karin breathes, not sure what else there is to say, or how she's meant to feel.

"You loved me that much." It's like he's speaking in the same breath, the same weak and watery tone that brings people like them to their knees with such painful truths.

"Yeah, I did." Karin mumbles, closing her eyes, hating how her chest feels so hollow. She feels like she's becoming a ghost, revisiting these memories and viewing them in a new perspective. When she opens her eyes again, Toushirou is still there, sitting beside her on the sofa, and this is not a dream. "I mean, maybe things would have gone differently, and I would have tried to convince you to go on one date anyway, because love is love, right? I was way over my head for you and you never even realized it. Or—" The words falter, and then Karin shrugs, because the possibilities are endless. "Or maybe it would have never worked out anyway, and we'd never see each other until today. Maybe it's fate."

"Maybe." He shrugs, making a noncommittal noise. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Karin brushes the sand out of her eyes, the tears that threaten to fall. "I'm sorry too."

"But," Toushirou looks at her, glances at the ring on her finger, "you're happy, right?"

"Yeah," Karin grins earnestly, and he grins back. Maybe he's relieved that all is not lost, that he's happy at least, that they can tentatively become friends again. "I think I have it pretty good."

The thing is, Karin has forgotten that in spite of the good and the bad, sometimes Toushirou is an insufferable person. "Even better now that I'm here?"

"Oh, _but of course._" She snickers, feeling happier when he joins in, because even though she's being sarcastic, she means it. "You're the cherry on top."

"So, tell me, what have I missed out on?" He asks, leaning forward, and Karin grins, finally able to shake the shadows in her mind away, shape it into something more joyful.

"Is that why you're here?" Karin asks, and proceeds to tell him everything when he nods. She spend the afternoon with him until she remembers that she has to pick up her kids. That's when he looks out of place again, awkward, bereft, and Karin wishes that she could anchor him, somehow.

"You don't have to go, Toushirou. If you want, you can see them. I can introduce you easily, tell 'em that there's a really important friend I'd like them to meet. Just like that."

He smiles sadly, and shakes his head. "Maybe next time."

Is there going to be a next time?

She hopes so.

"Well, my door's always open." Karin stands, and picks him up for a hug. This is what Matsumoto must feel, no wonder she does it all the time. It's a thought that makes her smile. "Don't be a stranger, Toushirou."

"Take care, Karin." He says, and just like that, she knows.

"Wait." She grabs his arm, and Toushirou stops. "Are you happy?"

She should have asked earlier, but somehow, the question slipped her and the topic of conversation had taken another turn that she hadn't thought about it until now.

He looks at her, and then nods. She releases a breath she hadn't known she was holding. "Yeah, I just—wanted to see you."

"Anytime." Karin says, and lets him go. He'd be alright.

There would be a next time. Maybe not tomorrow, or the day after that, but… eventually, there would be, and she'd be waiting for it.

Takashi finds her with a smile on her face, later that evening, and Karin grins even more when she sees him. "You look happy." He says, pleased, and she nods, because it's true, she hasn't felt like this for a long time. "So, it went okay?"

"Yeah," Karin laughs, elated from the bottom of her heart, and later, she thinks, she'll tell him all about it and the scarf Toushirou left behind once winter's day. "It went just fine."


End file.
